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Issue # 3 January 2011
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Bio


Most recently my poems have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Scotland, Quarterly Literary Review (Singapore), Pattaya Poetry Review (Thailand), The Warwick Review (UK), Istanbul Literature Review (Turkey), Paris Atlantic Journal (France), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Litspeak (Germany), Contemporary Literary Horizons (Romania), Munyori (India), The Tampa Review (US), Del Sol Review (US), The Cartier Street Review (US), The Houston Literary Review (US), Taproot Literary Review (US), Left Curve (US), The American Dissident (US), The Stinging Fly (Eire), Crannog Magazine (Eire) and on the deaddrunkdublin website.

I was born in the UK in 1969. I studied philosophy as an under-graduate and poetry as a post-graduate. My first full length collection, Night Watch Man & Muse is pending from Salmon Poetry (Eire) early in 2012.


Mark A. Murphy


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Violeta Angelova

Art is treacherous. No, it is the human heart that betrays.
Art is no more treacherous than the violet
with its mix of red and blue light, a leaf about to fall
to the forest floor, the suburban garden,
the unfulfilled harmony of the universe unfolding.
So the dancer flirts with the New York skyline,
flirts with the camera in her white stockings
and in the city of Austin my love changes violets in the vase
for her tribe, the gentlest of creatures. I heard her say,
for such a name, such ballet no praise is equal,
and later, God is love, the seventh seal is broken.
I thought it was greed that led me to covet the angel wings,
the body, the thighs, calves, even the feet
but there was no God I could call to, only the memory of death.